Eight Travellers
by Fufulafu
Summary: Stories of the Arcobalenos' past. Events that started their path and journey to who they are now. "Story time anybody?" "Ye-" "No." "Thoughts so."
1. Chapter 1: Luce

**AN:** So I just had to write something about the Arcobaleno, but jeez... does my writing have a long way to go.  
 **Disclaimer:** Don't own.

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The Giglio Nero Family was old, fortunate and their leaders, kind. They're family wasn't large but they weren't small either. They had territories but not enough to be antagonised and that was how they wanted to keep it. Simmering under the shadows they kept each other safe.

By the time Luce could walk and talk she knew almost everybody in her family. She knew who would keep them safe, who would bring danger even if they didn't mean to, she knew who would die for her and more importantly who would live for her.

It wasn't until she was twelve did she realise that she also knew who would die _because of her._

It was a short trip, routine really. Although that was probably why they were killed; routine, it made them predictable.

The shot rang out as somebody walking past Luce collapsed, screaming in shocking pain. It took Luce a second to realise that it was truly was aimed at her. Martin, Marc and Kate all went into action before Luce even realised she was in danger. Maybe they just reacted on instincts alone; after all, the echoing sound from a barrel was never good in their experience. Especially not now.

Not so soon after the Korean War, not during the Vietnam War and with the Cold War. Weapons scattered and plentiful, the black market might as well have been legal (few missing explosive and artillery didn't stop the shooting on either side; there was always more pressing concerns),

Death wasn't pretty and it felt just as ugly. It made Luce feel sick to her stomach. She never asked them to save her but they saved her with their dying breath. Maybe it was just a bit selfish of her to think it wasn't fair that she had to feel this way. That she had to live with this tragedy while they –she pray- rest in peace, content at their last actions. They had no right to decide that her life was more important than theirs.

 _Mother called this feeling 'survivor's guilt'._

She had no doubt in her mind that without her small legs and weak physic, the three grown-ups would have easily escaped into the crowd. A ten minute run made twenty because she ran twice as slow and had to stop one to many times to catch her breath, heaving on the side walk or alley way (they never stopped somewhere to open or with only one exit).

 _Marc died shielding her, Kate stayed to throw them off trail and Martin took on the thugs that caught up. In the end she was running her own pace down the lane, this time never stopping once or looking back. Every gunshot made her run faster and every scream made her flinch because the next one could be her own._

The worst part wasn't trying to convince herself that their blood wasn't on her hands because it was, despite the fact she wasn't the one that pulled the trigger, the one swing a bat or one that stabbed an already bloody and violated stomach. She has made peace with this knowledge.

The worst part, the thing that haunted is the question of who did they die for? A girl, a child, an innocent? What had she done to deserve their loyalty? (Or was that their loyalty lay ironed to her mother and they protected the child of their Don.)

 _Luce knew that these were simply the thought of a guilt ridden child, still young and unaccustomed to the way of life she was born into._

Months later she asked her mother, "Why did they die for me?"

"Why do you assume they died for you?" Her mother asked in return. Luce gave her a look and changed her question.

"What makes my life more important than them?"

"Nothing," her mother smiled. This time Luce stayed silent, but frustration built up and her teeth clenched. Her mother always had the answer for everything, the problem was she never said enough and at the same time said everything. But this time she went on, "Sweetheart, never ponder too much or assume anything about the dead because we are not them. Our feelings, emotions, reasoning and thoughts will never be anyone else's but our own. And when you die, you take all those with you. What makes you important is because they thought you so.

I cannot say what you might think or cope with people dying for you but this is what I believe in..." Mother pauses and looks to the sky, "I want to protect them with my life and they want to do the very same."

The sky was a brilliant blue, and clear, a vast sheet of blue that overwhelmingly and endlessly continued, only stopping at the heavens.

Luce didn't think she saw the same sky as her mother.

 _Yet with those knowing eyes, the elder woman unquestionably saw hers._


	2. Chapter 2: Reborn

Reborn doesn't remember being exceptional as a child. He was a genius but not the smartest, he was athletic but not prodigy, he was attractive but not a beauty. He was nothing compared to other talents in the world.

He sometime wonders what the world will make of him.

He moved around the world with his family, majority of his life till now was spent traveling the sea, the sky or the land. He never stayed long. Not long enough for him to remember faces of his friends, teachers and anyone on his block. For all his travels, his world was small.

When he was 8 his family stops. Stops moving, stops traveling and stops breathing. He didn't have siblings so the only thing he lost was a man driving a car while making bad jokes and a woman that holds him in his sleep, cradling, soothing, protecting.

His parents, someone had killed his parents with him the room. It was surreal, lying in the bed with two bleeding lifeless bodies. The blood drenched his clothes and stained his hands red; it stains his small hands as the killer held a gun at him ever steady. He wondered why he wasn't dead- why his parents were dead. (They shouldn't have died, not yet, not now, he's too young.)

His parent's murderer takes Reborn with him. Shoving him inside the car, the one where he spent majority of his life in. His heart aches. It twists and turns and forces tears into his eyes. Whispers of despairs echo in his head, they are dark and with all the intention of making the ache in his heart worse.

That night he doesn't die, doesn't stop breathing but his hands are red and he starts moving again. The sun rises and follows him, shining brightly, so warm. It makes his heart burn, Reborn just doesn't know with what.

The next time he woke – _he doesn't remember falling asleep –_ Reborn finds himself on a less than impressive moth-eaten single bed. The sky was clear, although it really wasn't that important of an observation. But it was the only normal detail that he clung to; it kept the anxiety to a manageable level, just barely. The rest of the room was the dirtiest combination of four walls, a bared window, ceiling and floor the child had ever seen. And this was coming from a child that's been through dozens of questionable motels and inns (they were cheap, the only ups side to those places).

Despite he's utter displeasure, Reborn stepped off the bed, careful were he stepped to avoid grim and dirt. From there he stood blankly; what should he do now? What _can_ he do now? Does he walk to the door and try to escape (not that he had high hopes on that happening) or should he obediently stay in the tiny room?

He turned the door knob, already refusing to go cooperate with his capturer.

Surprisingly it was open, which made Reborn even tenser, no scared. One day he will be a figure of danger and the one to strike fear in others. However right now, he was a simply child out of his depth. Reborn dearly hopes the unlocked door was a sign that his kidnapper was overconfident bordering on arrogance.

The door screeched loudly, _so so loudly_ and Reborn cringes. And when he spotted a middle age man sitting on one of the wooden chairs facing directly to him, Reborn flinched. How the bastard was sitting there so confidently and certain? He supposes it was to make him feel small and far below the adult.

Reborn's hold on the door knob tightened and despite the sweat built up under his arms and neck, his hands were dry, cold but certain.

 _I can kill this man._


	3. Chapter 3: Fon

**Disclaimer:** yeah...never gonna be able to own Khr.

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Fon came from a fiercely strict family of martial arts. But as time passed the family changed. Old traditions were opposed by the young who didn't want to be bound and the family broke into factions. He was born just before the grand change of laws and like everything in his else in his clan, it was a swift and fierce shift.

Within the walls of his home, there came to be only one expectation; to be the best. Be it in the arts or riches, you had one path. Up the mountain, to the top, it didn't matter who stood in the way nor how many. You knock them down or lose your existence.

Fon was a prodigy, the very definition. Everything came easily. He was the project that the elders sculpted and the young made to copy.

For the first five years he saw nothing beyond the towering walls that never ended. But he knew – for a fact – that there was an _outside_. Because trapped inside he could still see the stars, stretching over and beyond the stone borders. He wondered how big it is (the world outside). Was it bigger than his forest? His room was surrounded by acres of land implanted with a combination of trees and bamboo. He could wonder for days chasing rabbits and not see the same piece of land; although that was simply a theory of his, the caretakers would never allow him time for such insolent and childish behaviour.

When he was six he discovered he had a sister. The girl looked similar to him, but only physically. She was free and happier. In his young mind he never once thought himself as _unhappy_ , yet when he heard her laugh he knew. He didn't know such a sound could be made, so innocent, joyous and unconstrained. Maybe he laughed like that once.

 _Since then he noticed others with similarities to himself and his parents. Not all of them were younger than him and he wanted to ask if they were also his siblings. They certainly weren't servants, not with the fine silks and fabric that wrapped beautifully around them._

He was eight when he walked pass the towering walls for the first time. It was for a competition, a show case of his abilities in "harmless" matches.

However, the high staked competition took little space in the memories of the fierce warrior. The crowded streets full of noise that he glimpsed, those were the memories he valued. The details will never be lost to him. Yet, he did not yearn for them.

 _When the time came he would be a storm, free to do whatever because there was no one to stop him._

For the next few years it was dull, season past and Fon grew along with his patience. He never dared to act out because he knew his place. When he was younger he as terrified of all the adults, everyone that he seems to encounter were no pushover, especially not the ones that smiled serenely. But after a while he was less and less intimidated. The adults that loomed over him like mountains in his childhood now seemed so… _human,_ fragile, and weak, with _bones that he could easily break_.

He was a decade old when he thought it was time to show the adults exactly where they stood. He started with his mentor, after all he had nothing left to teach, nothing that Fon didn't already know. _Nothing._

The first defeat was taken graciously, his mentor congratulated the young prodigy with earnest, if not a little weary. The second time he had a clear underline of fright. Third, fourth, fifth, sixth… he was full out in panic, sweating like a pig. It was depressing really, to think that this was a man he had once looked up to.

"Please! Please don't tell anyone!" The elder man collapsed to his knees, clenching Fon's shoulders harshly until his hands turned white. Fon had to look _down_ to keep eye contact. Oh, how the roles have changed.

Fon only smiled ever so softly.

The rest of the training time Fon spent exploring his forest. He felt like flying as he sped through the trees, pushing himself harder, faster.

 _He felt like the wind and storm._


End file.
